Donnybrook
by silversurf4
Summary: Set between Season 1 and Season 2 when Crews and Reese begin to mesh as a team, before Tidwell. One shot - unbeta'd.


**Setting: **In the car. End of Season 1 - when Crews and Reese begin to bond, before Tidwell.

They were having their first argument.

Dani's thought '_Wait don't only couples have arguments, people who you care what their opinion of you is? But that would mean that somehow along the way they'd slowly gravitated from disconnected co-workers to people who mattered to each other. When the hell did that happen?_'

It started after a weekend fling she'd spent with a nameless man ended up with a noticeable bruise to her forearm in the shape of a handprint, a big handprint.

He'd noticed and she shrugged it off.

His protective streak was unwelcome and he knew it. He sat glumly slouched in his seat and a frown furrowed his normally untroubled brow. He was not done, he was just deciding on a new tack and she knew it.

She huffed loudly and waited for his next foray into her personal territory – an off limits area for him.

"What does it say about you that you pick up these men and they mean nothing to you?" He ventured boldly.

"That's none of your business." She shot him a dark look and countered quickly. "What does it say about you that the only thing you are willing to spend all that money on is fast cars?"

"Cars are just objects and objects have no meaning."

She scowled again.

"They don't," he repeated.

"They aren't men, they're tools," she shot back unhappy they were talking about her personal life at all, but giving him the bare minimum grudgingly.

'Tools?" He said sheepishly.

"Yeah, tools. And tools have no meaning." She pointedly turned his Zen on him and watched him sublimate his anger. Two could play at this game. He was pissed at her, but he wouldn't show it.

Some days she wanted to poke him hard enough to provoke a response, something more than a fake smile and empty Zen, but on those days she recognized that she was seeking a real connection with him and she did not want to connect to him. She didn't, she was positive of it.

"People aren't tools," he said quietly looking at his hands in his lap. The disappointment in his voice struck a chord and she felt emotion – _damn, him_.

"You don't get to judge me," she warned in a low angry voice, edging toward some emotion she didn't want to contemplate.

"I don't want to," he said plainly.

"Then what is it you want?" she finished her voice barely over a hoarse whisper.

At this he looked up and captured her attention with his guileless blue eyes. "I want…" his gaze wandered and she thought he'd lost his nerve. He seemed to travel somewhere else for a moment before returning to himself and her, "….to protect you – even from yourself - if that's what you need."

"Don't," she cautioned.

"Don't what?" his retort was sharper than he intended. "Don't care? Don't worry? Sorry, Reese, but you don't get to decide who or what I care about," his voice developed a dangerous edge. He was closer to emotion than she had suspected.

"Why is it important to you?"

"Because you are…my partner, maybe some day my friend, but you matter and I don't like to see you doing this to yourself. Punishing yourself for something that isn't your fault."

She didn't want the inquiry to continue, but somehow found herself incapable of not asking the question on the tip of her tongue. "How do you know it isn't my fault?"

His sigh filled the car. "Maybe it is, maybe it was. But what you're doing won't make it better, it will just make it darker, dig the hole deeper. After awhile the pain, the darkness, they become familiar - but they aren't true and they aren't where you should be."

"How could you possibly know that about me? You don't even know me," she spat the words at him. _How dare he presume to know her to understand her pain to know why she didn't deserve to_… she stopped herself and looked up.

He was looking at her with this odd, quizzical yet knowing expression. "You learn a lot in prison. You learn the all demons and devils. You know their names and learn their tells. A month in solitary you can survive fairly well, at six months the cracks begin to show, the first year you learn your secret self and see who you really are. Then you begin to see your demons. They are all there is to talk to. You learn them, you know them, you befriend them. Then you begin to see other's demons – the ones who sit on their shoulders and whisper to them."

"You're crazy you know?" she shook him off.

"Do you know how long I was in solitary?"

Her gulp was audible and her eyes downcast.

He didn't say, but his dark chuckle filled the car. "You gonna lie to me? Tell me that you don't hear them? Say they don't come to you in the dark of night? That you don't listen quietly while they tell you if you'd done something differently it would all be fine – that you are responsible for everything? I know they do – as sure as if I could see them sitting there on your shoulder."

She was gripped with the overwhelming compulsion to glance at her shoulder to catch a glimpse of the demon, but she caught herself. Crews saw the apprehension and the flinch as she tried not to do what she wanted.

"Go ahead, look," he urged, "they aren't there. They only come when you are alone, when it is dark and when you want something to fill the emptiness."

She gave in and looked behind her and absolute nothing greeted her with resounding silence and a empty backseat.

"What do you want? Why did you come back?" She asked her voice sounding bitter and brittle, even to her. She hated to sound like she felt, but today she couldn't help it.

"From prison or to life? Because honestly I'm not sure I am back. Some days it feels like I never left. Some days it feels like this is just some cruel dream and when I wake up I'll be in an 8x10 foot room with green walls and a steel toilet. It feels like that is real and this is a dream."

His fear was tangible and real to her. She never considered how hard it was for him, how fragile his mental health was and yet somehow he was the stronger of the two of them. She recognized she would not have survived what Crews endured in prison, it would have killed her or she would have taken her own life.

She looked at him now as if seeing him for the first time. If she looked hard she could imagine the demons lapping at his heels and whispering in his ear in that cell all those days and months alone. Her voice was low and filled with regret as she told him her truth. "I don't know how to stop."

He nodded gravely. "This weekend you come with me," he offered. "You won't have to be alone and I will never hurt you."

"What would we do?" she cautiously ventured.

"Nothing. Anything you want, but you won't be there with them alone. I will be with you."

She nodded and bit her lip. "I don't like to talk."

"I won't make you talk to me. Movies, dinner, the park, the beach…or just sitting on my deck watching the sun set. I'll just look out for you. I'll watch your back – you watch mine. That's it."

She considered him for a moment. He was known to be a violent and dangerous man, other cops warned. She found herself trusting him more than the words of warning from her father or Lieutenant Davis. How could this man who barely knew her understand what her family and friends did not? But he did. He knew the lure of the darkness, the luxury of pain and the seductive side of self-destruction.

"I can watch your back. I can do that," she confessed unwilling to commit to more.

"Then we'll both make it, Reese. All you need to not be alone in this world is one other person who sees you for who you really are and likes you anyway."

"I don't know about the liking part," she goaded, staying away, keeping her distance. Part of her knew that if she got close to Charlie Crews he could be like a new drug to her, impossible to quit and one she needed more of all the time. "I have you word though? No Zen stories?" she joked breaking the somber mood.

"No Zen stories, I promise." He smiled and she did too.

Their first fight had not resulted in any broken bones, bruises or scrapes. No one was in traction or the Emergency Room. She hadn't shot him. It was success – for them.


End file.
